Guide on Eliminating the Parent Page Slug from Child Page URLs in WordPress

Interested in detaching the parent page slug from a WordPress child page’s URL?

By standard practice, WordPress prefixes the URL of child pages with the slug of the parent page, which benefits SEO. Nonetheless, certain users prefer URLs without the parent page slug.

This tutorial will guide you through the procedure for excluding the parent page slug from child page URLs in WordPress.

Understanding Parent Page Slugs in WordPress

With WordPress, your content can be organized into posts and pages.

Pages can be hierarchical, allowing for the creation of child pages that fall under parent pages, which are generally reserved for broader topics.

For instance, under a ‘Services’ parent page, you could list ‘Consulting’, ‘Training’, and ‘Support’ as child pages.

Generally, WordPress structures the URL of a child page to include the parent page slug. Here is how it typically looks:

Adopting URLs with this structure is a recognized SEO best practice, enhancing the clarity of your website’s hierarchy.

However, removing the parent page slug could lead to broken URLs and suboptimal SEO. It might even induce conflicts with WordPress’ permalink system.

It’s advisable, to use regular pages instead of child pages if a parent page slug isn’t desired in URLs and organize them through the navigation menu to illustrate the hierarchical relationship.

Still, if it is essential to remove the parent page slug while maintaining the child page setup, let’s proceed with how this can be accomplished in WordPress.

Instructions to Exclude Parent Page Slug from a Child Page URL in WordPress

Your initial step is installing and activating the Custom Permalinks plugin. You can refer to our detailed guide on installing WordPress plugins for assistance.

Once activated, go to the child page you wish to edit. Look for the ‘Custom Permalinks’ section below the content editor to input your preferred child page URL.

Simply replace the default URL displayed in the permalink field with your custom URL.

For instance, we removed the services parent page slug from the training-programs child page’s URL, as shown below.

Remember to select ‘Update’ to preserve your modified URL. The Custom Permalinks plugin will redirect the older URL to the new one, thereby avoiding ‘404 not found’ errors for visitors with old links or bookmarks.

Visually, the child page will present a cleaned URL, absent of the parent slug.

Additional Expert Guides on Managing Pages in WordPress

With the know-how to adjust child page URLs in WordPress, explore our other resources on effectively utilizing pages:

We trust this guide has been instructive for removing the parent page slug from a WordPress child page URL. To further develop your WordPress skills, consider visiting our articles on crafting custom pages or our recommendations for premium drag-and-drop page builders.

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